In Yet Another Encounter, Iranian Vessels Interfere With Passage of U.S. Ship

In yet another combative encounter with the U.S. Navy, a vessel from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps interfered with the passage of a U.S. Navy ship on Sunday, according to Reuters.

Defense Department officials said that the Iranian ship passed directly in front of a Navy coastal patrol vessel, the USS Firebolt, forcing the ship to change course. They told Reuters that the Iranians’ conduct was “unsafe and unprofessional.”

The confrontation echoes another similar encounter two weeks ago, when four Iranian naval vessels came within 300 hundred yards of the American destroyer, the USS Nitze, near the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian ships eventually turned around, but the Nitze was forced to change course in what the Navy described as a “high-speed intercept.”

In January, ten American sailors were captured in the Persian Gulf by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and were released one day later.

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Sam Reisman (@thericeman) is a staff editor at Mediaite.

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